US stock futures were muted with a holiday-shortened week and downbeat month drawing to an end, before the Chicago Mercantile Exchange halted trading on Friday due to a data center glitch.
The CME is gradually starting to restore operations after a long outage disrupted live trading in futures and options across several markets worldwide, including US Treasurys and US crude oil. Two foreign-exchange platforms reopened at around 7 a.m. ET, CME said, but didn’t give any indication of when other trading might resume.
Before the freeze, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F) and the S&P 500 (ES=F) were both up 0.1%. Contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose 0.2%.
Meanwhile, individual stocks appeared to trade without problems, with the likes of Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) and Nvidia (NVDA) edging higher in premarket.
Stocks have rebounded sharply this week as traders ramped up bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its meeting in December, less than two weeks away. Renewed faith in the AI trade provided a tailwind for tech names in the run-up to Thursday’s trading shutdown for the Thanksgiving holiday.
But when trading resumes on Friday, the Wall Street indexes will be staring down a losing month. A sharp cooldown in megacap tech names has led a decline for November, as investors reassessed how quickly AI-driven businesses can translate hype into sustainable profits.
By Wednesday’s close, both the Dow and S&P 500 were slightly lower for the month, on track to end a six-month winning stretch. The Nasdaq, down 2% so far, is on track to snap a seven-month run of gains.
As November wraps up, analysts rolling out their stock-market predictions for the year ahead. Deutsche Bank has set a target for the S&P 500 of 8,000 by the end of 2026, at the highest end of forecasts. HSBC and JPMorgan expect the benchmark index to hover around the 7,500 mark.
Markets will close early on Friday, at 1 p.m. ET, with no major earnings or economic data releases on the docket.
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CME partially restores operations with restart of FX platform
The CME (CME) has started to gradually restore operations early Friday after halting trading of futures and options for several hours, thanks to a technical glitch.
Foreign-exchange platform EBS opened for trading at around 7 a.m. ET, according to a notice on the CME website. There was no indication of when other markets stalled by the outage could expect a restart.
“BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU are now open. Due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, our other markets are currently halted,” the notice said.
Markets in the US and across the world were impacted by the CME futures shutdown, with US Treasurys and WTI crude futures among those impacted as bond and commodities platforms went dark.
A cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers was the root of the stoppage, according to CME.